Cross-Chain Infrastructure Protocol LI.FI Raises $5.5M

LI.FI, an infrastructure protocol that aggregates cross-chain bridges and decentralized exchanges (DEXs), has raised $5.5 million in a funding round led by crypto-native investment firm 1kx. The fresh capital will help LI.FI pay for marketing and expand to more blockchains, founder and CEO Philipp Zentner told CoinDesk in an interview.

Other participants in the round included investment firms Dragonfly Capital, Lattice Capital, Scalar Capital, 6th Man Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and decentralized autonomous organizations BairesDAO and AngelDAO, among others.

LI.FI offers a software development kit (SDK) that aggregates bridges and decentralized exchanges across 14 different blockchains. The SDK offers smart routing to identify the safest and cheapest routes for transactions and multi-asset swaps.

LI.Fi wants to expand to additional layer 1 blockchains, Zentner said. The company will also introduce a new widget product that provides developers with a simplified user interface that allows their users to swap from anywhere into a chosen decentralized application, smart contract or asset.

“Bridging is an anxiety-inducing and often risky experience for both end users and developers, and LI.FI does the hard work of abstracting away the underlying complexity to enable more innovative applications and collaboration across ecosystems” 1kx founding partner Lasse Clausen said in a press release.

Read More: What Are Blockchain Bridges and How Do They Work?